“I’m not taking any at all — that’s the negotiation that you have to have,” Bryant told the website. “For me to sit here and say, ‘Oh yeah, I’m just going to take a huge pay cut.’ Nah, I’m going to try to get as much as I possibly can.”

As far as Dwight Howard he wished him well, while taking a few subtle jabs at him.

“I’m happy for him,” Bryant said, without a hint of his usual sarcasm. “I’ve said that before. I’m happy for him. It’s important for free agents to make decisions that they feel is best for them. That’s really what it’s about, being a free agent. You have to make decisions that you feel is best for you, best for your family and best for your brand, whatever it may be. So, it is what it is.”

“I think everybody is cut differently,” Bryant said. “[Howard] has his way of leading that he feels like would be most effective and would work for him, and obviously the way we’ve gone about it with this organization and the leaders that we’ve had — myself, Magic [Johnson] and Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] — we’ve done it a different way.”